When the U.S. Food and Drug Administration set out to track COVID-19 vaccine deployment, it needed timely and robust information. Wanting the ability to scale, the FDA turned to next-generation exchange in the Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources standard, said Jay Nakashima, eHealth Exchange president.

Retrieving real-time information with an on-demand tool like FHIR – an open standard that facilitates data exchange with legacy systems – facilitates new workflows, like automated prior authorizations, added Don Woodlock, InterSystems VP of global healthcare solutions.

Since 2020, Nakashima and Woodlock have worked with FDA's Project BEST, or the Biologics Effectiveness and Safety System – a drug and biologics safety project – on a pilot leveraging FHIR to automate adverse drug reporting after a drug goes to market. 

In this episode of HIMSSCast they discuss the FHIR model's first exchange – an FDA query to the Cedars Sinai health system in September 2022 – and how Veterans Affairs then went live on the proxy service in March 2023 to send veterans notifications about adverse events related to biologics and vaccinations. 

More national FHIR exchange use cases are possible as the model developed by the nonprofit and its partners is available to other national data exchanges, Nakashima and Woodlock said.

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Talking points:

• Providers are apprehensive about FHIR exchange.
• Healthcare is sitting on a "gold mine" of data and needs to grow provider exchange with payers, public health agencies and others.
• Government agencies are getting real-time drug experience data using the model.
• What the FHIR standard still needs to deploy at scale.
• TEFCA helps to facilitate national FHIR use cases.
• Regulatory specificity and funding are needed to facilitate greater FHIR exchange.

More about this topic:

What's the "concept car" for what digital health should be?

How AI and FHIR can help reduce sepsis mortality rates

ONC chief on interoperability 2024 roadmap

Providence implements FHIR to support value-based care

HIMSSCast: Don Rucker's fresh takes on the progress of FHIR, TEFCA and more

What Bulk FHIR can do for quality measurement and more

Andrea Fox is senior editor of Healthcare IT News.
Email: afox@himss.org
Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS Media publication.